Starting from scratch, gives us an advantage

MJ Xavier, to-be Director, IIM Ranchi spoke to ET about the challenges of heading one of the youngest IIMs in the country.

MJ Xavier is set to take over as the director of IIM Ranchi on November 8. He spoke to ET about the challenges of heading one of the youngest IIMs in the country, and what he plans to do to bring it on par with the older, better-established B-schools.

How do you plan to catch up with the other IIMs?

The best thing about starting late is that we know how to create an institute of repute. We plan to inculcate a corporate culture and extensive use technology, like B-schools abroad. We will push content and teaching processes through the ERP system (an online platform) which the other IIMs are yet to adopt. The idea is to integrate administration, student management and students' performance management to make processes simple. The institute is in talks with PricewaterhouseCoopers and IT firms to implement the ERP system.

How do you plan to address faculty shortage?

We plan to build a model with one-third permanent, one-third adjunct and one-third visiting faculty. We will encourage our existing faculty to collaborate with their foreign counterparts on India-specific research, which will motivate foreign academics to visit the institute more often. We have also asked for an interest-free loan of Rs 100 crore from the HRD ministry for five years to, among other things, employ the best faculty from anywhere in the world, on a contract basis.

What are your other areas of focus?

Like MIT and Yale University we, too, will have e-learning facilities and open courses for students. We plan to make our courses available online for other students, since as an IIM, we have a social responsibility. My focus will be to encourage research projects on locally-relevant topics like mining, manufacturing and social inclusion, given that we are in Jharkhand, where mining is a mainstay and projects looking to help marginal social groups are a must.